STOBMY PETBEL 335 



bered, was not wholly successful in his attempt to walk on the 

 waves. Sailors call the petrels ' Mother Carey's chickens ' ; but not, 

 as might be imagined from such a name, on account of any tender 

 regard or feeling of affection for the birds. Mother Carey is supposed 

 to be a kind of ocean witch, a supernatural Mother Shipton, who 

 rides the blast, and who has for attendants and harbingers the little 

 dark-winged petrels, just as the more amiable Mother Venus had 

 her doves. 



The stormy petrel is known to be the smallest bird with webbed 

 feet, consequently his smallness is to the ornithologist his chief 

 distinction. He is no bigger than a sparrow, and when seen flying 

 in the wake of a ship, gliding to and fro close to the surface, his 

 small size, sharp-pointed, swallow-like wings, dark plumage, and 

 snow-white rump, give him the appearance of the house-martin. 

 Like other pelagic birds, the petrel when on the wing is perpetually 

 seeking its food, and is seen to drop often on to the surface to pick 

 up some floating particle from the water; and yet to this day 

 ornithologists do not accurately know what it feeds on. The bird 

 is generally excessively fat, and when taken in the hand it ejects a 

 small quantity of amber-coloured oil from its mouth. When 

 dissected, its stomach is found to contain an oily fluid, and the 

 young are fed with the same substance, injected by the parent bird 

 into their mouths. Where this oil springs from, and how it comes to 

 be floating on the water, is one of the secrets of the sea which this 

 bird shares with other members of the petrel family ; but they have 

 no tongue to tell it. 



The petrels do not arrive at their breeding-grounds until about 

 the middle of June. They have colonies on the Scilly Islands, and 

 at various other points on the west coast to St. Kilda, and the Ork- 

 neys and Shetlands. A few small colonies are also found on some 

 of the islands on the Irish coast. The birds breed in holes in stone 

 walls and piles of loose stones, and, in some locaHties, in old rabbit- 

 burrows and holes in banks. A single egg is laid, on a slight bed of 

 grass ; it is very large for the bird's size, rough in texture, pure 

 white, and in most cases thinly sprinkled with minute reddish brown 

 specks. 



The young birds are fed at night, and may then be heard faintly 

 clamouring for food after dark. 



The fork-tailed, or Leach's petrel {Procellaria leucorrhoa), is a 

 larger bird than the last, being about the same size as the swift. It 



